Lobbies call for amendment to counter trafficking law to tackle emerging trends

The multi-billion dollar human trafficking industry has evolved, with new trends involving the use of online platforms to recruit unsuspecting victims.

While the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act, 2010, is in place, it is silent on online trafficking, making it difficult to effectively fight moneyed traffickers who use the legal loopholes to get away with trafficking.

Trace Kenya and Equality Now, two organisations involved in the fight against human trafficking, say this necessitates amendment of the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act, 2010.

Trace Kenya executive director, Paul Adhoch, said amending the law will address emerging tactics used by traffickers.

“It is now more 10 years since the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act was established. The current emerging trends in trafficking are different, hence the need to amend the law," he said.

“Today, before the trafficker gets to you physically, they may take even three years courting you online through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to gain your trust, before recruiting you to their ring without even the victim realising they are being trafficked.” 

Adhoch is also the vice chair of the National Advisory Committee on Counter Trafficking in Persons.

“The current law hardly addresses that. That is why we need to change it to comprehensively capture these new emerging trends,” he said.

Adhoch spoke on the sidelines of the first Mombasa public participation forum on the Counter Trafficking on Persons Act, 2010 review.

The meeting was organised by Equality Now in partnership with Trace Kenya and the Counter Trafficking in Persons Secretariat and advisory committee.

He said it was problematic to prosecute trafficking cases where adults were enticed with the promise of good jobs abroad. 

“We have seen cases where Kenyans are lured to Asian countries like Malaysia, Laos, Philippines in the pretext of going to work for an IT company only to end up being forced into cybercrime," Adhoch said.

“The recruiter then uses the professionals to steal from other people across the globe and all the proceeds go to them while they pay the professionals peanuts only for sustenance.” 

The Trace Kenya director claimed once the victims want out or start to slow down due to exhaustion, their vital organs like kidneys are harvested and sold to rich buyers. 

“Because they have been paying you peanuts, you have no way to buy off your supposed contract and that is when they take your organs to repay themselves the money they claim they used on you,” he said.

Equality Now programmess officer Mariona Ogeto said their aim is to ensure the voices of survivors of human trafficking can inform the reform of the Act.

She said the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act, 2010 is not being implemented effectively because it does not address the use of the internet.

“We also want to ensure the Act is able to conform to the emerging trends because we’ve seen an increase in things like online sexual exploitation and other things not provided for in the Act, which was created over 12 years ago," Ogeto said.

“For instance, most of the women and girls are being recruited online through social media platforms for sexual purposes. Through that recruitment, they end up being sexually exploited.”

She said although the penalties are high, including jail terms of up to 30 years and fines of up to Sh30 million for convictions, these are not deterrent in comparison to how much the perpetrators earn.

“This is a multi-billion dollar industry and a Sh30 million fine option is a slap on the wrist for the traffickers. In fact, we are pushing to have the ‘either/or’ option in the fine removed completely so that there is a mandatory jail term and a mandatory fine,” Ogeto said.

The trafficking ring is the highest earning industry in the world with sex trafficking at the pinnacle, followed by drug and narcotics trafficking, then arms trafficking.

Gabriel Mukhwana, the Save Jamii Social Justice Centre executive director, said laws against trafficking need to be punitive even for abettors.

For instance, in Lunga Lunga, Kwale county, traffickers have begun roping in community members into the trafficking ring for a fee.

The perpetrators identify vulnerable families who are willing to host the trafficking victims for two to three days at Sh3,000 to Sh4,000 per head per day.

“This is money that you cannot easily make in a day in Lunga Lunga. That is why the communities are now asking for the next business and will never share information to rat out the traffickers. It has become a business to them,” Mukhwana said.

In the past, trafficking victims were transported in Toyota Probox vehicles, but this has since been abandoned in favour of boda bodas.

A boda boda rider is paid between Sh5,000 and Sh10,000 to transport a victim from one point to the next.

“Now, one boda boda guy cannot cross over to another boda boda guy’s territory. They reach a border point and hand over the victim to the next boda boda guy who continues with the journey,” Mukhwana said.

Most victims are Ethiopians and Somalis being trafficked to South Africa via the Lunga Lunga border.

“We have found out that even some government officers are involved in the business. We have witnessed border patrol police officers escorting the trafficking victims, meaning they are also on payrolls,” he said.